Lammen Gorthaur
by Varia Lectio
Summary: Who was the Mouth of Sauron? Blending the film's portrayal with the books' Appendices, this story chronicles madness, plague, and a thirst for knowledge that leads to the darkest of destinies.
1. Chapter 1

LAMMEN GORTHAUR

Summary: Who was the Mouth of Sauron? Blending the horrifying portrayal of the extended edition of Return of the King with the background of the books' Appendices, this story tells the tale-- a chronicle of madness, plague, and a thirst for knowledge that leads to the darkest of destinations. . .

Betaing: Big thanks for betaing goes to Arianna Rookwood, Viper, Araniell, and elaryn.

Rating: R (or M) for violence and disturbing themes, including cruelty to animals and torture.

If anyone has questions about this piece, please feel free to contact me via either email or ff.n's PM system.

Chapter One: The Plague.

Gwathiel's brother was ill, perhaps dying.

She sat by his bedside, hearing the ragged, slow breaths coming harsher with every hour that slowly passed, bathing his brow and neck with a cool, damp cloth. She did not worry about contracting the plague-- even though one of the physicians who had formerly tended to him had sickened and died.

She had paid substantial amounts of gold for Osgiliath's remaining healers to come and tend him. But in the end, they had all fled, saying that his case was hopeless and that there were others who needed care. Others who perhaps could be saved.

Gwathiel knew that they were right. She could have threatened them, cajoled them, bribed them, but she knew now that none of that would work. The plague was a stalking predator that took all in its blind path, sapping, devouring, tearing down without discrimination or mercy. A tool of the Dark One, some said; a device of the Easterlings, said others. After all, had it not come from Eastern ports of call, Easterling cities and streets?

It did not really matter to her. All day long she heard the deadcarts rolling through the streets, going from door to door, taking shrouded bodies away. But now there were so many corpses that graves could not be dug quickly enough; the dead putrefied where they lay, and the stench filled the air.

The doctors had fled to serve others. But not him. Not the brother she had loved from childhood, when he had been a gawky, grinning, happy boy with whom she had romped and played with in the streets.

Holding the tears back, she continued with her ministrations.

Her brother was no longer the child she so readily remembered; he was a young man in his prime. He was tall-- so tall that the top of her head would only come up to his breastbone if he were to stand. His hands, now lying limp on the embroidered coverlet, were large with very long, pale fingers.

His face was not classically handsome, but she loved it all the same. It was a thin, long face, with large, pale eyes and a broad, full mouth. He had the kindest smile of any man that she had ever known.

Rising to her feet, she lifted the water-bucket, intending to dump its contents and fill it with fresh water.

She turned aside from the bed-- but a feeble sound, almost a moan, stopped her.

"Sister?"

His voice was low and hesitant; croaking and raw. But as she turned to him, she saw his sunken eyes flicker open.

"Sister. . . where are you?" His hand reached, groped out, but he was still so weak that he could barely lift it from his side.

He did not have the strength yet to smile, but she smiled for him.

She knelt down, throat aching, heart bounding for joy. Her own hand touched his, grasped the pale fingers and held them tight. "I-- I am here. My brother, I was always here-- even when the others... left us."

"Left us?" His head moved about, turning first to her, then to the wall. His eyes did not focus on her face.

"Water. . ." His tongue slipped out from between his cracked, dry lips.

"Of course," she whispered. "Let me get it for you!"

Not able to contain her joy and her tears, she hefted up the bucket of dirty water and rushed out, so that he would not see her weep.

Only when twilight came did she realize what had happened to her brother-- only then did she realize what the fever had taken from him.

He was blind.


	2. Chapter 2

Gwathiel's brother had always been special.

As a child he had been insatiably inquisitive, wearying his tutors with endless questions. Questions that branched off from one another-- if he happened to ask about the sheep that grazed in the fields, he would soon be asking about the plants that the sheep ate, and about the insects that burrowed under those plants, gnawing mindlessly at the roots.

When he could not find answers from the tutors, he consulted books. He asked questions about the stars, the sun, the moon. He inquired of lands far away, and the customs of the people who lived there.

As he grew older, his interests developed into a taste for the arcane and the occult. He would sequester himself in high towers with men of knowledge, consulting grimoires and charting the movements of the heavens. He would come down in the bright morning, blue eyes shining.

His attempts to divine the future were met with suspicion by all his relatives, save for Gwathiel. She tolerated it at first, seeing it as a natural extension of his boundless curiosity. She did not begrudge him the long hours he spent in his special study, laboring over some old text of lore. She did not worry when his speech became less direct and more mysterious, as he spoke to her of the strange things he sought to learn.

It was when he came up from his study with bloodied clothes and gore under his fingernails that she worried. He reassured her quickly, telling her that he was not hurt and that he had not hurt anyone else. He would never do that. He had instead dissected a dead animal, a goat that had had its neck ritually broken beforehand. He had taken apart its body in order to more clearly read the future.

"The stars lie to men, and a soothsayer cannot tell the future from the flight of birds or the rings of trees," he had told her. "But that which is from blood always tells the truth. Believe me, sister. I am not cruel. I merely seek knowledge. That is the highest goal."

Shaken, she had nonetheless agreed with him, but had exacted a promise that he would not be needlessly cruel to the beasts he used. He had agreed readily, again reminding her of the nobility of his purpose and the necessity of his methods.

But those who did not understand him as Morwen did turned away from him. They whispered behind their hands, calling him a sorcerer, a practitioner of the black arts. Some even said that he was in league with the Nameless One, for blood and entrails was what _his_ brutish followers used in divination, did they not?

A month after she had made him promise to her, she heard strange sounds coming from his study.

Animal sounds.

An animal in pain. The desperate scraping of its hooves against the flagstones as it struggled for life.

Gwathiel had fled as silently as she could, fearing to make even the smallest sound lest her brother hear her and catch her. She had heard of this form of sooth-saying from some of the others who now feared her brother: she had heard that barbarian tribes in the East practiced divination by breaking an animal's neck, or one of its legs. They would then sit, calmly watching as the creature died, noting every thrashing movement, every scream, learning the future from this display of pain.

For their highest magics, she had heard, they used children.

Gwathiel was revolted. _This_ was the knowledge her brother sought? She thought of the happy, kindly child he had once been, and was disgusted.

It had to stop.

But the plague struck first, sweeping through the city, taking young and old, wealthy and poor, noble and base alike. Friends she had known for years sickened and died. Their household servants either fled or fell ill.

But her brother did not seem to notice the destruction, nor did he seem to care. He stayed away from people, preferring to read his books and practice his magic, which Gwathiel now found to be darker than she had first believed.

But the plague had reached even him, at the last. As the bodies piled up in the streets, as whole families were extinguished, he came to her one evening shaking with fever, his brow running with sweat. He was bedridden a day or so later, clutching at her sleeve as she tended to him, thrashing and crying out in delirium.

After several days of madness, he fell silent and still. By then, everyone in their household, save for her, had gone. He was dead already, they said; his own dread magics and the abominations he had performed had killed him.

But Gwathiel would not throw his life away. "Whatever he has done, he is my brother," she would say to herself, maintaining her vigil at his side, "and I will be with him, even if I die."

_Even if he is a monster?_ her thoughts whispered.

But, still, she could not turn away.


	3. Chapter 3

After his fever broke, he recovered his strength with surprising swiftness. He had a large appetite, and what gold Gwathiel had left she soon spent on food.

He was different, though. He talked to her, but his voice was monotonous and dull, seemingly drained of life. At first she thought it was lingering effects of the illness, but one evening, when she was feeding him soup, she dared to ask him what was wrong, wanting to hear the truth from his own lips.

"What is troubling me, Gwathiel?" he asked with incredulous sarcasm, leaning forward, his gaze wandering blankly as he spoke. "I should think that it would be obvious as the two blind eyes in my skull!"

She looked away, ashamed.

He lay back, the muscles of his neck and shoulders tense with anger. "I want to _know_," he whispered in a voice of deadly quiet. "I want to know how it took my sight, sister. And most of all, I want to know how I can get my sight back."

Gwathiel licked her lips nervously. "The healers-- I can call for them. See if anything can be done--"

He sneered, cutting her off with a contemptuous snort. "Them? They can do nothing. They were helpless against the plague and they will be helpless against this. Do not waste what coin we have left."

Suddenly he reached forward, gripping her hands with a strength that frightened her. She bit her lip, holding back a cry; no man who had so recently been a convalescent should have such power.

"Listen to me, sister," he whispered. His breath was in her face, and it reeked of death, as though he was rotting from the inside.

Too terrified to speak, she merely nodded.

"You _must_ bring me my books. All of them-- even the ones I have never let you see. I will tell you where I keep the key to my study--"

She pulled away, or tried to, but his grip was too strong. He would not let her go.

"No, brother," she said, tugging harder. "No-- your magic--"

"Will save me!" he cried, squeezing her hands even harder. "Do you not care, Gwathiel? Or have you just been listening to those fools who whisper lies about me? Have you become as foolish as they?"

His accusation pierced her heart. Gaping, gasping, she stared at him, then began to sob brokenly. How could he accuse her so venomously, when she had cared for him when no one else would?

_Perhaps he has become as evil as they say._ The thought darted though her mind unbidden, but she found it hard to shake off.

"Brother," she whispered to him gently, attempting to calm him, "your hands are hurting me. You-- you don't know how strong you are."

"Do not tell me what I know and do not know," he hissed, but he released her quickly, a spasm of regret sliding across his face.

She listened with a reluctant and troubled heart as he told her where he hid his key. Then she left to fetch him his books.

There were so many of them! Gwathiel was astounded when she opened his study door and saw piles of books. Books crammed tight on the shelves; books heaped on his desk; books stacked up, high and teetering, on the floor. There had to be over a hundred, she reckoned at first glance.

When she actually began hauling them out, she found that there were _hundreds_. "So this is what he has spent our father's wealth on," she whispered, feeling anger rise up inside her.

She looked in the places to which he had directed her, and found even more books. There were hidden compartments in chests, in the desk, a second hidden shelf _behind_ the main bookshelf. There was even a book hidden inside a book; she laughed for sheer absurdity when she found that. However, when she looked through the small, dark tome, she found it less amusing. The language was one she could not decipher, and the crude, ink-smudged illustrations were gruesome ones.

The thought entered her mind that she should be glad that her brother could no longer see these horrid pictures, and looking once more at the depictions of death and vivisection and ritual sacrifice, she couldn't be sure that she disagreed.

Gwathiel brought the tomes to him, as many as she could carry.

For the first time in... years, she realized, she saw him being happy. As happy as when they had been children together, and the knowledge drove a spike of bitter, jealous pain through her heart. She looked at the books with reddened eyes and a clenched jaw, while he, delighted, ran his long pale fingers over their leather spines, caressing them, whispering, chortling. She couldn't understand a single word of his speech, and, guessing that it was some sort of invocation, soon left the room.

Though he had the books all about him, he did not speak again to her of them for several days, understanding that they had upset her. Indeed, for a while he returned to being the brother she had once known-- innocently inquisitive and talkative, chattering on with her about everything and nothing. She smiled and squeezed his hands affectionately, and he returned the gentle touches, even apologizing at one point for his earlier rough behavior. Surprised, Gwathiel accepted the apology at face value, and told him that all was forgotten and forgiven.

But soon he held his books in his lap, running his hands over them, opening them and pressing his cheek against their covers or pages. Sometimes his face was wet with tears. Soon, he began to ask her to read to him, thrusting the books out to her and begging like a child.

"But they disturb me," she protested. "I-- I looked in one, and the pictures in it--"

"You looked at them already?" he said, his voice cracking with anger. "Did I say to do that, Gwathiel? Did I once say that? I told you to bring them to me!"

"But now you are asking me to read them!" she cried. "Do you or do you not wish me to see what is in them, then? And brother, I do not _wish_ to see! I have seen enough!"

He recoiled from her, his lips twitching, sightless eyes rolling in their sockets. He was silent for a time, and when he spoke again, his voice quivered, devoid of strength or anger. "I am blind, sister. I cannot read. I can only hold them in my lap and smell them, press the pages against my skin. Please. Please, I would not ask this of you if I had any other option. Believe me."

"I believed you when you said to me that you would not cause pain to a living animal," she said harshly, refusing to let the pity she felt into her voice. A stand had to be taken. "Yet in the book I saw-- I saw pages of illustrations, showing animals-- and people-- being cut apart, butchered, tortured! You cannot tell me you_ believe_ in that! It isn't right!"

His mouth worked soundlessly for a minute, then he said hastily, "Gwathiel-- that particular work-- I never did that. Not any of it."

She stared at him, wanting to believe him, but finding it difficult. She was still unwilling to tell him what she had overheard in his study that one night-- she realized that she was afraid, deeply afraid, of how he might react.

_Would he ever hurt me? _she wondered, and knew that she no longer had a clear answer to the question.

"Still-- Still I am disturbed by it," she whispered. "I--"

"Gwathiel, my dear sister." He reached up to her and cupped her cheek in his hand, finding her by the sound of her voice. "You know I love you. I love you more than anything else in this world. Please, if you feel uneasy, I will not force it on you. I ask only then that you search out any of my-- colleagues, and see if they still live and will read for me." His tone brightened, and he smiled that broad, dazzling smile that had so lit up her heart in earlier days. "Then you never need to bother with them again."

Though her heart still troubled her, she agreed.


	4. Chapter 4

She searched, as he had asked her to.

Gwathiel found two of her brother's colleagues as the night closed in. She ascended to the top of a high white tower, where the mystics had once gathered to read the movements of the heavens.

They stood there side by side, bathed in the pallid glow of starlight, their backs turned to her, seemingly unaware that she was there at all. They were murmuring in a strange tongue, chanting together.

Frightened at what might happen if she interrupted, she whispered, "I beg your pardon, but I--"

They both turned about before she could speak another word. "Child, why have you come here?" one of them asked in such a soft, low voice that she had difficulty hearing him at first.

She gathered her courage, drawing her long woolen cloak tighter about her body. The tower was very cold, and she wondered briefly how her brother had endured the chill of night and the solitude of his quest.

"I come seeking the colleagues of my brother," she said, her tone stronger now.

"And does he practice the High Arts?" the second man asked, his voice and inflection disturbingly similar to the first speaker's.

She nodded. "He is very eager to know-- certain things. He wishes to speak with some friends who might help him in this troubled time."

"We shall see to him, child," the first speaker said. "We think that we know who your brother is. . ."

They followed Gwathiel out of the tower, descending the steps with silent footfalls. Even when the two men followed her in the street, they were as quiet as ghosts.

It frightened her as much as her brother's hideous books, and his display of unearthly strength, had.

When they reached the house, Gwathiel showed them inside and led them to her brother's room.

He greeted the men with great enthusiasm, smiling brightly, his blind eyes shining with tears of joy. The men smiled cold, pale smiles, gripped his hands, and settled down to talk.

Gwathiel closed the door behind herself, and left.


	5. Chapter 5

Her brother, and his guests, were gone when she arose the next morning.

She lay down on his bed, weeping, afraid, confused. Her fingers gripped the covers tight, bunching them in her fists.

On the pillow, she found a note.

It was written in a hand that she did not recognize; perhaps it was one of the strangers' writing.

She read it through her tears:

_Dearest Gwathiel, my sister who has always loved, cared for, and protected me, even when others have not, _

_I am going away, dear sister. I am leaving Gondor forever. I have no desire to be a burden to you, or to inflict on you that knowledge which you do not wish to know. My desire is for your safety and happiness-- and for my sight to be regained. I now go in search of that goal; that I might see again, and know the wonders of the world. _

_Yours forever in affection. _

She laid the letter out, flat and smooth, on the bed, and read it over and over again. The wild thought occurred to her-- had he been kidnapped by the strangers? But no, she dismissed the thought. It would be just like him to go away in search of adventure and new things to learn.

So, that was the end of it. And somehow, though she felt that he was not dead, nor would he die soon, she also knew that she would never see him again.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six: The Mouth Speaks.

We traveled together for many long days, the two men and I. We left the country of Gondor, heading here, there; to the far South and the far East.

Life was riotous with scents and sounds and sensations against my skin, for with my sight gone, the remaining senses rose to the fore.

Sounds were sharper than ever before; I learned quickly to discern between one man's tread and another's. And what a cornucopia of scents the port city of Umbar was! Swine's flesh roasting over a fire; fish packed in salt; the dung and piss of beasts and men left smeared on the street; the sweat of laborers and the perfume of harlots. Life for me was vivid, sensuous-- yet dark.

My friends would often read to me from the books _she_ had brought up for me. We would chant spells in the night, our voices blending and interweaving into one momentous song of power. I learned much of the Haradrim, studying in detail their myriad methods of human sacrifice.

But my chief fascination was ancient Numenor's great golden temple, built under the direction of the Lord Annatar, raised to honor Morgoth. I had only heard bits and pieces of the tale as a child, and then always distorted in favor of the Faithful, who had resisted Annatar and his Golden King. The Faithful had been slaughtered like beasts in the Temple for their insubordination, or so my tutors said, and though I was supposed to feel horror at this (and I feigned that well!) my sympathies and fascination were with Annatar's priests and priestesses. What had it been like, I had wondered, to take up the sacrificial knife and drive it into human flesh, spilling blood on the golden altar? What had it been like to fire the furnaces of the great, hollow image of Morgoth, in whose red-hot arms the Faithful's children had been laid?

They were dark and grotesque questions, and I asked them to no one but myself. They would have recoiled from me in horror if, as a child, I had voiced this curiosity, but even then I was clever enough to know when to hold my tongue.

Ah, well. They all turned away from me in the end. Even _her_. I could not see her face, but was she such a fool that she thought I did not hear the fear in her voice? Did she imagine that I didn't smell her guilty terror of me on her skin?

_She is a traitor,_ I would tell myself at night, when I was alone. _She did not accept you._

I wept then, in those long, cold, desert nights that were as dark as my days. For myself, and for her. Looking upon me now, you would not think that I could weep, would you? You think me a monster, devoid of human feeling; that behind this mask there are no emotions, only unthinking cruelty.

No. I am cruel, but I think and feel as any man does. I have forgotten much in the long years-- how many, I am not certain-- that have passed since I was first made blind. I have forgotten how my sister's face looked; I have even forgotten her name. I have forgotten my own father and mother, my lineage, and my ancestors.

Even my own name is lost.

_But I have my sight. _

My lord Sauron, the one you abhor and war so pathetically against, gave me back my vision. The two men led me to the dread tower of Dol Guldur, when it was occupied by the lord Sauron. I felt the heat of Sauron's Eye against my skin; I shrank from it, kneeling on all fours with my face to the stone floor. My useless eyes wept tears of pain and terror.

The men extolled my virtues to the Dark Lord, telling him of my cleverness and cruelty. There were no lies in what they said of me; I am proud to admit that it was all true. In the years since I had lost my sight, I had not slackened in my study of the black arts. Nor had I hesitated to shed blood in the required sacrifices.

Ah-- you shrink away at that! You pull away from me! As if that alone could save you from my attentions. You are chained to this dungeon wall, my friend. You have no choice but to stay and listen.

As I was saying-- and do not flinch!-- the Great Lord listened to their speech. When they were done, he spoke to me, speaking without lips. His thoughts came directly to my mind.

_What do you wish?_ he asked me. _You shall be my servant, my Mouth to speak my words to the peoples I shall conquer. You shall sit on a throne of black iron and rule the White City when its walls are overthrown._

_What do I wish for, lord?_ I whispered back to him in my thoughts. I was terrified, so terrified that I could not have spoken audibly even if it had been required of me.

_Yes, _he said. _Ask, and I shall grant it._

_My eyes, lord,_ I said. _Give me my sight again._

He said nothing more-- but my request was granted! Suddenly, I had the power to see once again!

Ah, friend, you cannot imagine how sweet a gift that was. My first sight in uncounted years was of the Great Eye of Sauron, blazing down upon me. It was so brilliant that I cried out for joy and terror and pain, all at once. Never before and never since, I think, have I ever felt such intense emotions.

Ah-ha, you scoff; Sauron the Accursed surely cannot give men back their sight! You speak from rank ignorance; I am living proof.

Here, let me remove my mask of black iron, so that you may see.

Orc, hold the torch a bit higher, so that our friend here can get a good look.

You shrink away again! Is my face so dreadful?

Though my sockets are burned black pits, still... _I can see._

And now, my friend, I think that I shall tell you no more of myself. You do not seem to be very curious, at any rate. Instead, you mock that which you do not understand. You mock me. You mock Sauron the Great.

And for that insolence you shall pay.

I recall that you still have not told me what I wish to know. You never answered my earlier questions. Instead, we have been distracted with this conversation. A pleasant diversion, but a tangential subject, nonetheless.

Now, our discussion will continue, and I hope that you will be more forthcoming this time.

You will not like what I will do to you if you refuse.

But this one thing is certain: you shall _see_ none of it. How, you ask? By losing your sight, of course. I think that is a just punishment for a prisoner who mocks Sauron the Great; who laughs at his chief servant.

The only question is _how. _

A red-hot branding iron? A sharp knife? Or perhaps I shall gouge your eyes out, whole and undamaged.

There are many options. I shall leave you to choose, my friend.

Choose soon. And speak quickly to me. With luck, you'll not live in darkness for half as long as did I.

The End.


End file.
